Day In A Hot Summer
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: The one day of the year the ghost of Liam Ironarm walks the earth, Keladry of Mindelan manages to be in the only practice court he haunts.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Ahaha. The emperor of all random but stranglely interesting pairings: Kel/Liam I, with a side-dose of Liam I/Alanna. And yes, he is dead. Please **_read and review!_**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing belongs to me.

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Kel finished one pattern dance, picked up her water bottle and drank deeply.

Leaning against a pillar, she surveyed the dusty practice court. The middle of summer; some said the hottest since the Famine. Worry everywhere. She should be in New Hope, she thought, where people might need her.

But no, Fanche was adamant that Kel was totally unnecessary, and should be packed off to see her family. Having done so much bossing that it was a bit of a relief to be bossed, Kel obediently sorted out her luggage and traipsed down to Corus, where some of her family resided in the town-house the Mindelans kept.

When she got there, she was amused to find that Lady Alanna had jumped the sword and left orders for her Palace rooms to be ready for her and a note to say _'If you get to Corus, you are not to do anything remotely useful. Healer's orders'_ which Kel didn't necessarily plan on obeying, but made her laugh anyway.

Then, of course, it got hotter, and hotter, and hotter again, so that nobody stirred from their rooms or whatever cool and shady spot they had found. Queen Thayet wrote to her daughter with a peevish dissertation on the heat and its various effects on the country –_if I want this kind of heat I can damn well go down to Pirate's Swoop_- and a callous Kalasin replied _Mother, my heart bleeds. It could be worse, you might live in Carthak_, which resulted in a royal snit for a couple of days, at which point her Majesty discovered the benificial effect of a cold glass of water over the head.

It was early. Dom and the rest of Third Company wouldn't be up for a good few hours yet. Kel grinned, and thanked the gods she hadn't indulged in someone's –she couldn't remember whose- lethal home brew. She had smelt it and taken the first opportunity to empty it surreptitiously out of a window. Even though Neal's atrocious healing brews had deadened her sense of taste in the first few months of the year due to a nasty cold-sickness that arrived in the first week after Midwinter and made itself at home for a month, that was wearing off and Kel might not have survived an encounter with that... alcoholic substance.

Kel put down the water bottle and started another pattern dance.

She was half-way through when she stopped.

Clapping. _Clapping?_ In a deserted court?

She spun, glaive at the ready- and segmented the intruder neatly in half-

-or she would have done, but the glaive whistled right through the space where a tall, scarred, red-haired man stood, green eyes gleaming with mischief.

Kel nearly screamed. She did drop her glaive, and the man shook his head sadly. "And you were doing so well. Lesson number one. Do not drop the weapon."

Kel ignored the reprimand. "Who are you?"

"I'm Liam Ironarm," the man replied. "I used to be the Shang Dragon."

Kel stared. This man –this deceased man- was part of hundreds of tales. He was a legend. "You're dead."

"I'd noticed," Liam said dryly.

"... You've been dead twenty-five years." Kel picked up the glaive. "That's before I was born."

"I imagine so," the ghost said. "It's been quite boring, you know. I'm only here one day of every year. Alanna always comes. Fitting."

"You died in the Hall of Crowns," Kel said, trying to come to terms with the fact that she was talking to a ghost. "What are you doing haunting here?"

"This's where Alanna beat me." Was it Kel's imagination, or was he closer? She propped the glaive against a wall. When she turned round, he was in front of her. "The most memorable recent event of my life. You remind me of her, a little..." He reached out, quite casually, and touched her cheek. "Unstoppable."

She stepped out of reach. A lazy smile on his face, he followed. "She told me about you, not so long ago. Ten years old and bent on being the first known girl page for centuries. Admirable."

Kel leaned against a wall. "Can't you haunt elsewhere, sir? I was practicing."

"Not sir to you, Keladry. Do you know, I think she's forgotten?"

"Lady Alanna was down at Pirate's Swoop last time I heard," Kel informed him, taking her weight of the wall and edging away. "It's only a few days' hard ride away and there's a ball tonight, so she'll be here." She smiled a little at Liam's expression of disbelief. "It's important. I got an invitation. Therefore, Lady Alanna will have got one, and probably a covering note from his Majesty demanding that she attend."

"How do you know?" Liam demanded.

"Lady Alanna is a lot like my former knight-master," Kel said. "They share a line in excuses."

Liam grinned. "Your knight-master was Sir Raoul, wasn't he?"

"Lord," Kel corrected.

"I know the man."

There was a slight silence. "Why are you here?" Kel asked. Liam shrugged slightly. He was standing right next to her again, and she edged away, but he followed, shooting her a look out of the corners of his eyes.

"Don't ask me."

There was more silence.

"You remind me a lot of Alanna."

Kel was forcibly reminded of a lot of the old rumours that she'd heard –just folktale, really, probably nothing in them

_...oh gods, I hope there was nothing in them... _

about the Lioness and the Shang Dragon. Mostly salacious, and she'd refused to believe them, but now... She stole a glance at him. _Oh, gods,_ she thought quietly. _I should know the truth when I hear it by now._

Kel fled with a clatter as the glaive fell to the floor, brushing past a much smaller, surprised figure with slightly silvering red hair and purple eyes and dressed in dusty green clothes as she ran.

Alanna stepped into the practice court, a wicked grin on her face and a knowing light in her tired eyes. "_Liam_. Could you manage not to scare the only other lady knight we've got out of her wits?"


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Hey, I'm glad you guys liked my random little flight of absurd fantasy! Thanks for the AMAZING response you guys gave me. I've never had so many reviews for just the one chapter before:) So, if you like this chapter too, please make like a lot of other wonderful people and **_review!_**

**Disclaimer:** Nothing is mine.

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Liam chuckled. "Now, Kitten. That would be no fun. Young Kel is far too amusing to frighten not to." He floated towards her. "You weren't frightened."

"I almost expected it," Alanna said softy, eyes following his movements. "You were too damned stubborn not to."

Liam laughed. "Oh, you expected it, did you, Kitten? What were the shriek and those nasty, nasty words-" he traced the line of a recent scar on her cheek, making the hairs on the back of her neck rise- "for, then? Kitten, you haven't been taking care of yourself."

Alanna rolled her eyes. "Bless me, Liam, for I have sinned-" and was abruptly cut off by a ghostly kiss.

"I didn't know you were a Mithroist."

"I'm _not_. Push off, you wretched spectre, I'm married."

Liam obligingly glided back a few paces. "That reminds me. How is the inestimable George?"

Alanna laughed shortly. "Inestimable. Thom is visiting Aly. Alan is getting into the maximum amount of trouble possible with Raoul in the desert. Gary is buried in paperwork, Jon is regal, and Alex is still dead."

"You found Aly, then." Liam managed a decent fascimile of sitting on a bench, and patted it. "C'mere." Alanna came, and sat at the other end.

"Yes. In the Copper Isles."

"Amazing. She's just like you." Liam grinned.

"I'm sorry?"

"So Thayet has managed to bash manners into you over the years. I meant that both of you have a talent for turning up in unusual places."

Alanna grunted inexpressively and looked away, resting her elbows on her knees.

"How are you, Kitten?"

"A little bit older."

Liam sighed. "And incommunicative as usual. Fine. Which else of our mutual acquaintances have we not yet discussed?"

"Thayet and Buri."

"Ah, yes. Is Buri still joining Raoul behind the curtains at every party?"

"Yes."

"Are the Riders flourishing?"

"Yes."

"Is Thayet still beautiful?"

"Yes."

"Kalasin number two still writing very long letters from Carthak?"

"Yes."

"Are Roald and Shinkokami getting along?"

"Yes."

"Are the Riders and Own still indulging in fun and games _and if you answer this one with 'yes', Kitten!..._"

"Yes," Alanna said, not paying much attention, although Liam's groan of mixed amusement and despair caught her. "What did I say?"

"Yes," Liam answered. "You weren't listening, were you?"

"No." Alanna sighed. "I'm thinking about a lot of other things."

Liam reached out and touched her hair. "Like?"

"Aly," Alanna told him. "I can't believe she's done what she's done but she _has _done it. Helping to mastermind a _revolution_?"

"On the grand scale." Liam said dryly. "But as you say, she's done it."

"I told her spying wasn't for her," Alanna began.

"You mentioned," Liam put in, and she shot him a death glare and continued.

"So she sailed away, got herself enslaved, was sold, became a god's vessel, and at the end of it all managed to be spymistress to the Copper Isles!"

"Ambitious of her," Liam remarked lazily.

"Yes!"

Liam looked at her through half-closed eyes. "This worries you so much for what aching reason, Kitten?"

Alanna swore at him.

"Uncalled-for, Kitten."

"I'll be the judge of _that_. She's my daughter, Liam. My _daughter_. And she ran away from me."

A deeply uncomfortable pause ensued.

"She ran away from me," Alanna repeated dully, and stared at the opposite wall, fiddling with the hem of her tunic.

"She's happy now."

"Some comfort."

"There's never that much in whatever we do, Kitten." Liam stretched his legs out in front of him.

"Cheerful point of view."

"Well, it's true." There was more silence. "You'd have believed me once."

"Not any more. We've all changed, you know."

"I haven't; dead, remember?"

"Oh."

Liam shifted, as if he was about to say something he didn't really want to, and stared at his translucent boot-tips. " I think you should forget about these annual meetings."

Alanna sat bolt upright. "I'm sorry. I'm getting lazy in this heat, unlike Kel." She prodded the fallen glaive with a toe. "I'm just about brain-dead. So tell me, what did you say?"

"I said you should forget about these meetings," Liam said patiently. "Go back to George. Have a future."

"What?" Alanna cried.

"You heard me." Liam's voice was fading, and so was he, slowly melting into the background, growing paler and paler. "My time's up for this year and I'm not coming back. I've had enough of living in your future."

Then he just disappeared. But Alanna could have sworn that the tiniest thread of a whisper touched her ears.

_I still love you, Kitten._


End file.
